English for Academic Listening: Teaching the Skills Associated with Listening to Extended Discourse

Abstract

Many ESL and bilingualstudents at our universities face problems in the transition from "special" programs, in which they listen and interact in settings with trained language specialists, to university courses, in which they are taught by professionals in other areas.Research in discourse analysis has acquainted us with the need to view language as it is actually used before developing materials to teach its usage. This article presents a brief review of literature available to most ESL professionals regamling the skills associated with listening, and provides an overview of one successful approach.

Planning for Academic Success: Survey of University Professors' Assessments of Non-native Students' Language Skill Needs

“…In national surveys, faculty members ranked reading and listening as the most important language skills contributing to academic success (Johns, 1981;Powers, 1986). Listening skills of non-native students are often faulty and need to be trained to follow the discourse style of university lectures (see Richards, 1983;Lebauer, 1984;Anderson-Mejias, 1986;DeCarrico & Nattinger, 1988 ).…”

“…Teaching language skills within the context of the tasks which they will eventually serve is recommended by some scholars ( Bridgeman & Carson, 1984;Horowitz 1986;Anderson-Mejias, 1986); while others advocate integrating reading, writing and study skills within an adjunct ESL model (Saville-Troike, 1976;Snow & Brinton, 1988;and Adamson, 1990). Still others suggest designing language intervention programs even after students are admitted into the academic program (Xu, 1991;Wan, Chapman, & Biggs, 1992 In addition to the survey questions, interview questions were designed to establish a profile of each discipline.…”

Challenges in the 1990s for College Foreign Language Programs

“…After having selected problem areas, TAs discussed possible solutions in terms of the skills and concepts necessary, desirable, and appropriate for a successful teaching/learning experience. For example, the importance of developing pre-academic listening skills in intermediatelevel FL courses was discussed, with reference to work by Anderson-Mejias (1986). She points out that most intermediate-level FL courses fail to teach strategies for listening comprehension that would enable the FL learner to negotiate the leap from conversational exchanges to the kinds of lectures typically encountered in the third-year literature survey courses.…”

ESL, Ideology, and the Politics of Pragmatism

“…The didactic tradition which authorizes faculty to lecture and assign text-books and requires students to take notes, ask an occasional question, and take exams is not challenged in the EAP literature. Instead, exercises are proposed to improve students' listening, note-taking, and "appropriate" questioning techniques (Anderson-Mejias, 1986;DeCarrico & Nattinger, 1988;Lebauer, 1984;McKenna, 1987). There are very few examples in the EAP literature of a critical orientation to academic content or challenges to the information-processing model of the traditional lecture class, exceptions being Benesch (1992), Haas, Smoke, and Hernandez (1991), and Raimes (1991a).…”